Friday, December 31, 2010

I hope you and yours are surviving the holiday onslaught and are ready to celebrate in any small way you see fit the passing of the old year and decade and bring in the wishes and hopes of a new beginning. 2011 and a new decade are just around the turn of a clock and I hope all the best for all of you.

Again this week I'm foregoing our usual listening to the surviving episodes of Vic & Sade and share with you a Jack Benny show from January 2, 1944.

For quite a few years, Jack did a fantasy segment around the new year in which he played the old year needing to move on and make way for the baby new year. They were always funny and heartwarming, especially the ones performed during WWII in which he hoped all the troubles the world was going through would soon be over. He got his wish...the troubles would soon be over to make room for new troubles...but that's what we humans do. We muddle through, champion, try and fail and try and fail and try and fail until at last we succeed, only to try a new hurdle. It's what we do. And we always feel better for it.

I hope you enjoy this show, I always do. And I hope you try and succeed at whatever you set your sights on in the coming year and decade.

I'll be rooting for you.

Here's Jack.

Funny stuff, now go get drunk!

Jeffy's Angels wanted to wish you all the best too. While tats and piercings are verboten at "Ye Olde Drink Hole", body paint is always welcome. :)

Thursday, December 30, 2010

As I continue re-posting some of my favorite posts of the past year, here's the exciting conclusion to the tale of how The Illuminati tried to kill me and then changed their minds, from a week in April 2010.

Our Story: While the Mysterious Shadowy Figure confabs with Jeffy, Bigfoot and Bob the Alien enjoy the ambiance of The Drink Hole from the other end of the bar...

You'll see that as the story played out, the action shifted every other day between Bigfoot and Bob drinking at the end of the bar awaiting the order to do away with me, and Marco "The Mysterious Shadowy Figure" Torre explaining the situation to me...at some point, Superman tried to intervene on my behalf...

Our Story:...While Jeffy has a word with the Mysterious Shadowy Figure, Superman comes to his aid!

Meanwhile, Rusty set her sites on the "new meat" in her hunting grounds...

Our story: Bigfoot and Bob the Alien mingle with the "Normals"...Rusty makes her move!

As "The Mysterious Shadowy Figure" continued to try and strike fear into my heart, Jeffy reminds him there's a blog to be written here...

Our story:...The Mysterious Shadowy Figure is about to exact retribution from Jeffy when...

...here is where I did my tribute to "Mandrake, the Magician" and "The Phantom" creator Lee Falk on his birthday...I've excluded it here for the sake of the tightly woven story playing out around it...

Now back to out thrilling, edge-of-your seat serial!

Bob the Alien and Bigfoot learn about "bar tabs"...

Our story thus far: While The Mysterious Shadowy Figure struggles with making Jeffy take his threats seriously, Bigfoot and Bob the Alien realize they have more "real world" issues...

Jeffy's Angels are a very generous, charitable and giving lot for most things...but ya gotta pay fer yer own beer, boys!

If you want to dance, you've gotta pay the piper...if you buy the land, you've gotta deal with the Indians!

Once again I waylay "The Mysterious Shadowy Figure's" hastening of his plans as I remember it's Willie Nelson's birthday and the duties of the blog call...

Inserted here was a lengthy tribute to Willie...now back to our story!

...which turned out to be a VERY bad thing for Marco.

Our Story thus far: - The Mysterious Shadowy Figure, Bigfoot and Bob the Alien, ostensibly working for The Illuminati, track Jeffy down to The Drink Hole and accuse him of not paying proper homage to them in his "Ode" to his blog for repairing his damaged hard drive. Willie Nelson plays The Drink Hole Amphitheatre on his birthday and...

From Wikipedia:- Illuminati (plural of Latin illuminatus, "enlightened") is a name that refers to several groups, both historical and modern, and both real and fictitious. Historically, it refers specifically to the Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded on May 1, 1776. In modern times it is also used to refer to a purported conspiratorial organization which acts as a shadowy "power behind the throne", allegedly controlling world affairs through present day governments and corporations usually as a modern incarnation or continuation of the Bavarian Illuminati. In this context, Illuminati is often used in reference to a New World Order. Many conspiracy theorists believe the Illuminati are the masterminds behind events that will lead to the establishment of such a New World Order.

From Jeffy's Head: - The Illuminati would be an organization of Artisans and Scientists who would like to lead the world to embrace the arts and sciences as the highest pinnacle of man's experience - and in doing so would do away with petty human trifles which cause anguish, grief and all human suffering (up to and including needless death) caused by bureaucracies and organized religion. Up with the enlightened, down with the ignorant time and life wasters, say I!

From Jeffy's Head Addendum: - In my mind the Illuminati would include membership by such art and science minded people as Stephen Hawking, Willie Nelson, Steve Jobs and Jerry Beck. Ryan Seacrest may or may not be a member, but if he is, he was "kissed in" by a former member, much the same way he gets to host "Rockin' New Years Eve".

Well...wasn't that a fun waste of time? I thought so!

And so we all lived happily ever after...all thanks to Willie Nelson. It's all a pretty true story...kind of.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Earlier this year my external hard drive went "Kerfloobie"...at least that's the technical term. Luckily a good friend and devoted blog reader, Marco had the ability to get it going again.I had quite the ordeal nontheless. The story of the loss, the return and when the devil wants his due...

As we join our hero, the lonely blogster, it is day 6 since his ordeal with the little comatose external hard drive began.

Suffering from digital withdrawal, he sits in the cold, beige halls of the computer hospital, waiting for the computer teams from DARPA and JPL to do their binary magic and hopefully resuscitate his little black box of "stuff". Doctors and nurses "on call" do their best to comfort him while he waits outside the OR.

Big deal. You've lost 66 gigabytes of music. You still have all your CD's in storage, you'll get mostof your stuff back!

You've lost 95 gigs of "Oldtime Radio" shows. Allot of them are available through individual collectors out there. You'll be able to get most of them back.

You've lost 125 gigs of comic book and strip scans. There are file share sites out there that house this stuff. You'll be able to get a few of them back.

It's just "stuff", Jeff. Sure you've invested the last 13 or 14 years culminating these digital pearls, but they're just "stuff". And haven't we learned a valuable lesson about "backing up" your "backup"?

The drama deepens. What emotional scars will this leave our once wistful blogster?

Cartoon character note: The nurse above may look a little like one of Jeffy's Angels, but you can tell she's not because she has on sensible shoes.

The mouring continues...

Patiently and helplessly waiting for his crack computer staff to revive his downed external hard drive and recover the treasures stored in the lost data, our erstwhile blogster seeks comfort from his spiritual advisers.

Jesus only had his boss's tough love to dish out...

The Flying Spaghetti Monster gave me an empathetic pat on the head with his noodly appendage...but he seemed a little drunk, so maybe he was just touching me to find his bearings...

And Superman showed off his newly discovered power of "Super Aloofness"...damn our yellow sun and the powers and abilities it affords him...

I feel a little like Linus without his blanket.

Keep your fingers crossed for the boys in the "clean room" working feverishly sorting out all those "ones" and "zeros". As pitiful as I may appear above, I am the eternal optimist!

GODSPEED to you of binary magic! I have the faith in the matrix!!!

Help arrives!!!

Our withering blogster, still reeling in anguish from the apparent suicide death of his external hard drive, wanders the streets aimlessly. Unsure of how to live his life without his treasured MP3's, CBR's, JPEG's and MVE's, he staggers down a dark alley where...

Yes, my hard drive inaccessibility was apparently software oriented and not a hardware based issue, and my old friend, co-worker and blog-reader Marco was able to use his binary Jedi skills to pull her back from the edge of darkness.

I know that in this age of great personal tragedy and loss, this era of earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, Mexicali and Sumatra, that my trivial collection of geek treasures is a small matter...but hell...there mine.

Excuse the lateness in the day that I finally got this post up, but I've spent the last 10 hours backing up my back-up. So to the folks out there who have given me their kind words, thank you and rest assured all my junk is now safely doubly backed up on 2 computers and 3 external drives and I have them all safely stored in the engine room here at blog headquarters.

Right next to that big turbine generator.

With the huge electro-magnets at each pole.

Crap.

See you tomorrow...I have something to do.

Sigh.

Enjoying the return of what I'd lost...

Now that I lived through my own personal data loss hell and successfully (with the help of my buddy Marco) got it back. I'm going to take my recovered drive and my 2 back-ups for my back-ups for a run. They've been cooped up too long and they're feeling frisky, so I'm taking the day off from my blog to take them to the park for a run!

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

More of some examples of some of my favorite blog postings from the past year.

As we all struggle with a down-turned Economy, I blame the shortcomings and short-sightedness of the human race. As I rage, rage, rage against the dying of the light, Superman struggles to comprehend the "big picture".

From January 27th, 28th, 29th, 31st and Febrary 1st, 2010...

Continuing on my path to becoming the world's wordiest cartoonist...not to mention the most copyright-infringiest...part 3 of Superman and my discussion on the changing world economy from down at The Drink Hole: oh yeah...click images to enlarge to readable size.

Superman continues to lack foresight while Batman and Iron Man set bad examples:

Ahhhhh...justice is blind...and she works at the Drink Hole!

Jeff continues to convince Superman of his faith in humans to overcome their own troubles...